Multi Tasking with Scrapbook Papers & IKEA

So tonight I sit here clearing scrapbook papers that I decided I don't want from my shopping cart at The Scrappy Gourmet. Who the heck broke in and put over 60 papers in there? I did that? Naaaahhh. And for some of these, what was I thinkin'? Though some of the Pink Paislee papers, I'm lovin':

Must break up the tediousness of zooming in on, uh, about 50 papers where I question my sanity when I previously hit "Add to Cart," once I get a closer look. Do you get the positive rushy-glowy effects of binge shopping by adding to cart? That's the only way I can explain this. This is why buying online is good. You can impose a cooling off period. Don't get me wrong, The Scrappy Gourmet has some fantastic papers, and in my short 2-month addiction to scrapbooking, I've already placed several orders. But selectively clearing a shopping cart, when the obsessive side of me doesn't want to let an eye candy opportunity go without another, closer look, is truly tedious.

To break it up, I surf some blogs. And find something really intriguing, right here in the Blogs of Note feature in Blogger Dashboard: ikea hacker. This blog shows how people take IKEA stuff and dramatically modify it, or use it in innovative ways. Our home office is lined with seven beech color IKEA Billy bookshelves with solid doors on the bottom and glass doors on the top. They make nice impact in such multiples, especially with the doors. But they will always feel temporary -- now that I've been in real mahogany-lined home offices, Billy will always reek of those early adult post-college years:

But what if you surrounded Billy shelves with molding below and above so they look like floor-to-ceiling built-ins? You can upgrade the hardware too, as I already have. I may just do the molding trick someday if we want a more permanent installation. No use chucking Billy to the curb, or Salvation Army, or even Freecycle when we really should learn to make the best of some things we got.

Speaking of such, check out this bathroom re-do featured on ikea hacker using IKEA products:

Before:

After:

Amazing, huh? So if you've hacked any IKEA furniture, accessories, anything, the guy at ikea hacker asks you to send him some material to post about!

Now, I go back to scoring some cool Pink Paislee papers ...

Stone Cold Crazy 2

So there's this great stone showroom not far away, Schwake Stone. They have what I need. For the past two summers, I've been piece by piece, bit by bit, building a 6-8" tall, rustic stone edge along the front garden. Yeah, just an edging of stone, but I'm very precise about what I want there. And it's taking forever to complete it as I pick up one or two, or sometimes if I'm very lucky, I find three or four pieces at the same time that are the right shape, width, height. Can you imagine how long it would take me to build a 2-foot tall wall? And that's still a very short wall!

Now, I must build stone edging under my cascading curved swaths of Japanese Forest Grass, which when it grows up will look like this from Heronswood:


It's not as full and lush yet, but it's getting there. And it needs a low bank of stone under it to support it and set it aside from the grass. See, Heronswood thought so too.

And, after two years, I can't believe that all I have to do is drive down to the Schwake showroom and find the stone I want, like one of these:

So coming soon, a photo not from the Internet but from my own garden of Hakonechloa macra 'Aureola' spilling over a low edging of dry-stacked thin stone.

Basement Overhaul

Overhaul #1: Tonight, researching a major change for our basement. Water problems. Always been there, likely always will be. Previous owner warned us about it. We have an outdoor staircase going down to the basement. Wierd, but at least we can get out of the basement easily if there's ever a fire (silver lining in a dark raincloud). The staircase drain backs up during torrential downpours, of which there are more lately. Especially if we don't remember to clean plant debris away from the drain. We rarely remember to do this. And then water seeps in through the door. Ugh. Happened a few times this spring. Current carpeting must be ripped out.

Thus, researching Flor. Ever got a problem, rip some squares up and replace them. Sounds like a plan to me.

This also means, after you're done designing your own shoes and your own handbag, you can design your own carpet! Oh what great fun! This is a cool design, but for us, in a different colorway:


Here it is in somebody's home:

Another nice customer example on the Flor website. Obviously, I am drawn to samples where it's not just a grid of squares:

I've ordered a bunch of samples, and will be playing with our basement's dimensions in the Configurator until the wee hours.

Overhaul #2: Banish oak tones from the basement. Wanna know how I feel about oak? The basement has custom-built oak shelves along one wall, and a matching entertainment center on another. They're quality, they're sturdy, they're very much needed and used. But they're oak. And very middle-of-the-road traditional. The basement is going to be my design studio and I must be surrounded by something inspirational, not traditional.

Something like this from the Sundance catalog is more to my liking there:

Thus some painting and distressing will be happening in the near future to approximate this look.

Wow looking at all this, it doesn't feel so hip to be with so many squares ... all the photos kinda hurt my eyes here, but it won't be like this in the basement. It has lengthy rectangular shelves and I'm thinking of installing the carpet in a diagonal to draw your eye toward the other end when you walk in.

Here's an alternative for the floor ... stripes:

While I'm inspired by the Flor rug idea here, I could never ever ever go in this room. Why? See that stack of books? Aren't you tempted to ... just ... with one finger ... puuuuuuuuuushhhhhhh ... heh heh heh ... can't stop looking at it. Obsessed, I say, obsessed.

Design Bags To Go With Your Ribbon Shoes

Gotta move on to other things this evening, but I leave you with this, another Chicago company, 1154 Lill Studio that custom makes handbags and totes from fabrics that you choose:

There's lots of different handbag, evening clutch and tote styles and tons of fabric choices. Here's one I designed real quick:

Same style, different design:

One more so we have an odd number of photos (sounded like good reason to me):

See? You could spend all day and night playing with patterns and colors. Have fun!

Crafty Soles Got Under My Skin

Told ya I have visual obsessions ... I can't leave the ribbon ideas alone (see post below). I offer to you a few ideas.

MJ Trim Hand Dyed Velvet in Bougainvillea. Luscious!

MJ Trim Plaid Dupioni Silk Ribbon:

MJ Trim Stitched Grosgrain Ribbon in lots and lots of colors:

Buckles, buckles, buckles:

Even safety pins, how cool is this:

Go forth, ladies, and create!

Crafty Soles

Ever need just-the-right-color sandal to go with summer clothes? I have a generous stock of black, brown and beige shoes of various styles and degrees of office-appropriateness, dressiness and grubby garden-ness. I tend to not want to invest in non-neutral colors unless they're inexpensive flip flops or other summer sandals. But these, you must have these, especially if you have a crafty DIY soul ...


You can change the ribbon color every day if you want!

Love love love. And as a hobby seamstress, I have a healthy stash of cool ribbons. Although I don't have any LFN Textiles ribbons yet, I've always loved the innovative designs ... tomatoes, pears, chocolate cakes, poppies and alliums, even knitting instructions:

There's even a ribbon commemorating my evil garden nemesis ... the dandelion:

On my shoes, I could see leopard or zebra grosgrain ribbon, ribbon with stitched accents, delicate sheer silk ribbon, embroidered and beaded ribbons ... I see a feverish search for unique vintage ribbons in my future. For new ribbons, buckles and other embellishments, MJ Trim is a great source.

So how do you get a $278 shoe purchase past a husband, especially when it's not even a complete shoe? Can you imagine explaining this one? Men just wouldn't get it. May be moot obsession anyway ... it's not available right now in 6.5, my size.

Oh, but ah, never give up! It's hard to remember life before Google, yeah? Here they are from Mohop the manufacturer, lots of low and high heel styles, wedges and flats. Oh so tempting. And handcrafted in Chicago, too. See a whole gallery of ribbon ideas! See how customers have used ribbons -- some used crochet ribbons, vintage ribbons, stones, buckles ... so creative and visually interesting. My new life goal is to get posted here!

But how to acquire, how to acquire ... there is the jar of spare change. It tends to add up fast ...

Oh So Giddy About Style For A Good Deal

So I surfed around Antiques by Zaar for a bit after referring to them below. Someday I will be overcome with my Chinese furniture obsession and will purchase from them. That is inevitable! For now, this table caught my eye:

I love it, and I already have two under our living room windows. It's a perfect spot for plants, and of course for cats. But I wouldn't pay well over $1,000 for a real vintage or antique table and then expose it to cat claws. With the tables being under windows, cats are on them every day. Just the other day, I saw our newest little guy, Chaai, hanging by his claws on our Chinese writing table because he tried to jump on it and missed a bit. But I wasn't fazed. Why? Because we got our Chinese writing tables for $100 each! We took pictures of Chinese writing tables on our most recent trip to Thailand a few years ago, and we made a special side trip to Baan Tawai, just south of Chiang Mai. Years ago on our first trip to Thailand, we tread carefully through one of those very expensive shopping centers by The Oriental. We loved what we saw, but could not afford it. It's the kind of place where you watch your elbows and you look behind you before you back up. Can't afford to pay for anything inadvertently broken! A woman in one of the shops told us to go to Baan Tawai, where everything is "cheap cheap cheap." That year we spent much time in Chiang Mai (why we were there so long is another story, and a long one, for another time, let's just say it involved visiting the U.S. Embassy many times, and sitting under John Ashcroft's picture made me shudder) and we did a little shopping in Baan Tawai. Her words "cheap cheap cheap" were correct and we've never forgotten them.

So a few years ago we were in Chiang Mai again, and we were prepared with plans and pictures of furniture we wanted to make. I read the book The Treasures and Pleasures of Thailand -- I recommend this book for anyone shopping in Thailand. While the authors are higher-end shoppers, the tips and strategies they share are right-on and appropriate for shopping in any environment there. For example, during our first visit in Chiang Mai, our hotel arranged a minivan and shopping guide to take us to Baan Tawai. They kept speeding past places we wanted to visit, and stopping at crappy shops. We didn't understand at first. But after our last stop of the day when something overcame us and somehow we walked out of a shop with over $150 worth of gifty things we really didn't want (and that was a lot of Baht in 2001), and we saw the guide settling with the shop owner, we finally got it. The next day, we asked the tuk tuk driver who hung around outside our hotel to take us to Baan Celadon for our big dinnerware purchase. He played chess outside with his daughter while we loaded up on celadon plates and bowls, and I think all our boxes weighed more than the tuk tuk and the four people in it! It was a precarious ride back to the hotel.

The Treasures and Pleasures of Thailand book recommends you do your research, be prepared, and travel on your own. So in 2005 we decided to not be dependent on others and we rented a car. We had plans to make and purchase quite a bit, and ultimately the car rental saved us money because we could negotiate better. We had many things made for us, including reproduction Chinese writing desks just like the photo above. Each was $100, made of teak and finished with a very dark espresso stain. They have the slimmest drawers. We didn't bargain the business owner down much, instead we emphasized that we wanted old wood, well-seasoned wood, and we were willing to pay for quality. The shop did an excellent job. We took measurements and pictures with us, and they made the tables to the exact measurements we wanted. They included all the details in the photos. The tables have cracked just a little over the past few years in the adjustment from Thailand's humidity to our dryer Illinois air, especially in winter. But it just makes them look older, and that's OK.

Another great Thailand shopping resource are Nancy Chandler maps for Bangkok and Chiang Mai.

Here is our gorgeous girl Seesa, a bluepoint Siamese Snowshoe, lounging on one of the tables.